Saint Kitts and Nevis

The smallest sovereign state in the Americas, and the oldest English colony in the Caribbean. Thomas Warner landed on Saint Kitts in 1624, and the island became the base from which the English settled Antigua, Montserrat and Barbuda - it was called the mother colony. It was also shared, uniquely, with France, the two nations partitioning the island between them for most of the seventeenth century and jointly massacring the Kalinago at Kalinago Bay in 1626 before turning on each other repeatedly. France ceded its share in 1713. Brimstone Hill, the enormous fortress built by enslaved labour over a century, fell to the French once, in 1782, and was returned by treaty a year later. Nevis, across a two-mile channel, was for a time the richer of the pair and a fashionable spa; Alexander Hamilton was born there in the 1750s, and Nelson married there in 1787. Sugar dominated both islands until the state-owned industry finally closed in 2005, the last in the Caribbean to do so. Independence came on 19 September 1983, the last of Britain's Caribbean colonies to take it. Nevis has its own legislature and a constitutional right to secede, and voted on it in 1998, falling just short of the required majority. Citizenship by investment now underpins the economy. Basseterre is the capital. The country covers about two hundred and sixty square kilometres. Mount Liamuiga is the dormant volcano at the island's centre. A scenic railway built to carry cane now carries tourists. The two islands are separated by a channel called The Narrows, crossed by ferry in about forty-five minutes.

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